Digital Methods Initiative

🏴‍☠️🆕 A new version of our social media capture tool Zeeschuimer! 💾 Highlight feature: export captured posts as CSV files directly from your browser - and open them with Excel, Numbers, or other spreadsheet apps. ✨ Update installed automatically, or get it from tools.digitalmethods.net/zeeschuimer!

🐈‍⬛🐈New 1.54 4CAT update 🐈🐈‍⬛ github.com/digitalmetho... 📽️ Show downloaded media in the Explorer. This works for media uploads and social media datasets if images/videos have been downloaded through 4CAT. ✏️ New "Upload annotations" processor that lets you add new data fields to existing datasets. (1/2)

Social media is no longer social. Most of it is passive viewing of videos and pictures from people we've never met. But we're still studying social media like it's 2010. We've entered the post-social media era — and research needs to catch up. osf.io/preprints/so... preprint w/ Richard Rogers

enjoyed this "wayback studio" moment at @internetarchive.eu with @anthbrtn.com @iiil.li @idilg.bsky.social @hetsalwel.bsky.social @esthrr.bsky.social @digitalmethods.net @d-eepculture.bsky.social @publicdatalab.bsky.social @digitalculturekcl.bsky.social & many more! ✨

🏴‍☠️ We just released a new version of Zeeschuimer, fixing various capture bugs. ⚠️ If you are already using Zeeschuimer it will unfortunately NOT be able to automatically update to this new version. Please re-install from tools.digitalmethods.net/zeeschuimer instead. Apologies for the inconvenience!

A small 4CAT update just in time for the holidays - v1.52! 📊 Processors for regression analysis and dataset statistics 🧭 Test LLM prompts from our prompt library with the PromptCompass processor 🤖 Use Deepseek and Gemini 3 APIs with LLM processors 🐛 Many bug fixes! ➡️ github.com/digitalmetho...

Just released: 4CAT 1.51 “The R is in the month” Highlights: 📊 Classification evaluation: subpar F1 scores, now in 4CAT 🤖 New LLM processor options #️⃣ Search by #hashtag on Telegram 🖼️ Image hasher: check for duplicate images! 🪰 A LOT of small bug fixes and improvements github.com/digitalmetho...

🐈‍⬛ 4CAT 1.50 is here! 🐈‍⬛ This release brings under-the-hood improvements, a faster web interface, new processors, better LLM analyses, improved annotations, and lots of bugfixes. 🔗 Full changelog: github.com/digitalmetho... 🔗 How to upgrade: github.com/digitalmetho...

Tommaso Venturini and Richard Rogers presenting their new book "Digital Methods: A Short Introduction" during the (warm!) DMI summer school 2025 #dmi25

🔔New 4CAT version: 1.49🔔 🔎 Explorer revamp: Investigate datasets through an interface that mimics the original data source. Sort your data, make manual field notes, or add processor-made annotations. 🧰 Data source updates 🦜 Zeeschuimer import fixes Full changelog: github.com/digitalmetho...

🗞️ A great deep dive in Dutch newspaper @nrc.nl, in which Elon Musk's tweets over the past few months are analysed after capturing them with our tool Zeeschuimer (tools.digitalmethods.net/zeeschuimer/)! www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2025/...

new database of 200+ social media research tools (via Coalition for Independent Technology Research) airtable.com/apphRmVsFpqb... #digitalmethods #internetstudies #opensource @digitalmethods.net

🔍Introducing Zoekplaatje: a Firefox extension that scrapes search engine data 🔍 Currently supported: Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yandex, Baidu, Marginalia, Najdi & Seznam. It also collects ✨widget data✨ from Google and Bing, like 'People also ask' and AI summaries! 👉 github.com/digitalmetho...

Testing my data collection work flow with tools from @digitalmethods.net and I am blown away. What incredible gifts to have put into the world - thank you! #AcademicSky #PhDlife

2 nouveaux logiciels de nos partenaires ajoutés au catalogue d'outils du @medialab-scpo.bsky.social : - Panoptic par le CERES pour travailler sur de gros corpus d'images - Zeeschuimer par @digitalmethods.net pour scraper des réseaux sociaux récalcitrants Essayez-les ! medialab.sciencespo.fr/outils/

🦜 New Zeeschuimer release 🦜 📌📕 New modules for Pinterest and RedNote/Xiaohongshu! Capture data from these platforms directly with Zeeschuimer—and export them to the newest version of 4CAT (also out now) for further analysis. github.com/digitalmetho... Updates automatically if installed already!

🔔 We just released a new 4CAT version, v1.47! Some highlights: 📥 Data capture from Bluesky, Pinterest and RedNote/Xiaohongshu 🤖 Prompt-based coding and annotation of data via the OpenAI API 🛠️ New & updated data fields for datasets from TikTok, Instagram, & co Read more: github.com/digitalmetho...

🔍 How can creative coding techniques like soundscaping and video recomposition help us unpack political issues + influencer practices on TikTok? 🎵📹 📖 Insights from explorations w/ @publicdatalab.bsky.social around the 2024 Romanian elections at @digitalmethods.net winter school:

Postdoctoral Researcher in OSINT & Information Disorder at Amsterdam University werkenbij.uva.nl/en/vacancies...

🇧🇷 What is the current state of #digital methods for Internet research in #Brazil? Join @digitalculturekcl.bsky.social roundtable on 31 Jan to hear from @jannajoceliomena.bsky.social, Alan Angeluci, Elias Bitencourt, Giulia Tucci, Richard Rogers and Thais Lobo 🔽 www.kcl.ac.uk/events/digit...

✨call for papers✨ @aoir.bsky.social symposium "From Platform Governance to Generative AI: Concepts, Methods, and Data for Studying Tech Governance" with @pgmt.bsky.social @zemki.bsky.social @ckatzenbach.bsky.social Daria Dergacheva @redeker.bsky.social: platform-governance.org/aoir-flashpo...

This week part of the team ventured out to participate in the #dmi25 winter school with the title "Chatbots and LLMs for Internet Research?" Building on our #datavisualisation and #exhibitiondesign for grounding-ai.github.io, we hosted the project "Who's my host?" exploring personas across LLMs.

#dmi starting 2025 with Digital methods winter school! Doing a project on Femcel culture on Pinterest with Idil Galip

"Chatbots and LLMs for Internet Research?" - opening of @digitalmethods.net #dmi25 at University of Amsterdam ✨🧵https://www.digitalmethods.net/

The @digitalmethods.net Winter School in Amsterdam will take place on 6-10th January 2025 with the theme “Chatbots and LLMs for Internet Research?”. Apply by 9th December. 📝✨ publicdatalab.org/2024/11/29/d... #digitalmethods

welcome to kingscat 🐱 a new @4cat.nl instance to support collaborative social media research at King's 🎊✨ www.kcl.ac.uk/news/gather-... created by @digitalmethods.net @oilab.bsky.social hosted by @kingsdh.bsky.social @digitalculturekcl.bsky.social @kingsartshums.bsky.social #opensource #socialmedia

🦜 New Zeeschuimer release: v1.11.1 Douyin maintenance 🦜 The Douyin module now properly collects data from Search, modal dialogs, and video pages. Zeeschuimer should update automatically. github.com/digitalmetho...

This extensive website on computational social science by Michael Achmann-Denkler provides 4CAT and Zeeschuimer tutorials alongside other great tips & tricks. Check it out 👇 social-media-lab.net

the "Spotify artist network" tool is no longer working, since Spotify has restricted access to the "related artists" API endpoint (without warning, lots of unhappy devs); I am trying to get access again, but I'm not very optimistic

New platform, new paper! Talking about ideal first posts :) The platformization of the follower factory with my co-author Johan Lindquist: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Fascinating workshop with @4cat.nl walking us through their social media capture and analysis tool, talking through capabilities and possibilities! @kingsdh.bsky.social

🔔 New version out for Zeeschuimer, our tool for capturing social media data from the browser! This brings it up to speed with Instagram's latest updates, fixing the capture of posts from Location and Tag pages. 💾 Get it here: github.com/digitalmetho... ⬆️ Already installed it? It will auto-update!